Covering episodic premieres at film festivals can sometimes get a little tricky. Working with the knowledge that you only have one piece of an ultimately expanding puzzle and avoiding spoilers is sort of like navigating the heat sensing laser traps from spy movies, but it’s a uniquely fun challenge all the same. With that in mind I set out to dig into showrunner and writer Silka Luisa’s SHINING GIRLS episodic premiere, debuting at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. Directed by Michelle MacLaren, this first in a series episode introduces us to Kirby (Elisabeth Moss) who, following a brutal assault, deals with a constantly shifting sense of reality in which details and people change on a dime without her realizing, leaving her and viewers alike floundering to understand where the line to actual present reality lies. Years after her attack, she teams up with veteran reporter Dan Velasquez (Wagner Moura) to try to understand her fluid hold on reality and the connection between her attack and a recent murder.
The stiflingly unsettling tone is immediately set as we are introduced to a young Kirby as she has a…rather uncomfortable encounter with a stranger (Jamie Bell) who explains after examining her makeshift big top circus—complete with barely tamed lion in the form of a bee held captive under a cup—that the best way to tame the lion is to “find its shine” and then snuff it out, while he carefully rips the wings from the bee. It’s a deeply uncomfortable omen for the rest of the show and a brilliant way to dip our toes into the depths of Bell’s character’s depravity. When next we meat Kirby she is on the cusp of leaving her job at the Chicago Sun-Times and relocating to Florida to escape from the smothering presence of her trauma. When the detective who worked her case calls her in to try and identify a suspect, her likely already tenuous grip slips more than she is able to cope with and her sense of reality distorts beyond all ability to grasp.
Though most of the episode is obviously set up for what’s to come, and therefore doesn’t have quite as much meat to chew on as what will no doubt follow, there are still plenty of creepy clues and atmosphere to keep viewers hooked even when some of Kirby’s reality distortions might be so rapid-fire we hardly know how to make sense of them. Jamie Bell and Elisabeth Moss turn in remarkable performances, but for my money the stand out ancillary character is the first iteration of the medical examiner Kirby meets while teamed with reporter Velasquez.
SHINING GIRLS reads, from first episode alone, like a box of puzzle pieces all shaken and dumped on the floor for us to sort through, assuming of course our puzzle also took the form of a shapeshifting reality we could hardly trust our eyes to keep hold of. Kirby’s practice of grounding herself through journaling may be a handy activity for viewers as well, not to mention a fun bit of detective work to do as you watch along. For those who like to follow source material either beforehand or afterwards, the show is based on Lauren Beukes’s novel of the same name and will be coming to AppleTV+. The only constants are anxiety, deeply creepy men who seem to lurk and lure with pleasantries, and the fact that there is more here than meets the eye.
Apple TV has been churning out some truly original and unique horror fare almost since its inception, with the likes of things like SERVANT and the newly introduced SEVERANCE among its major draws for genre fans; by all appearances SHINING GIRLS will be right at home and, judging by a cursory glance at the novel’s plot synopsis, might even nudge its way into a twisted top spot.
Tags: Apple TV, Elisabeth Moss, Film Festivals, Jamie Bell, Lauren Beukes, Michelle MacLaren, Shining Girls, Silka Luisa, SXSW, SXSW 2022, Television, Wagner Moura
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